Original post, Wednesday, March. 3, 4:22 p.m. (updates below): I’ve just been informed by Candi Cooper that the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department
raided the Never Get Busted headquarters in Travis County at
approximately 6 p.m. on Tuesday night. Barry Cooper has been taken into
custody.

Officers allegedly seized their computers, phones and other digital
media. Barry is allegedly being charged with a misdemeanor offense.
Candi claimed the charge is making a false report to a police officer,
in relation to a sting operation her husband recently carried out against an officer in Liberty Hill, Texas.

In his sting operation against Liberty Hill Police Captain George Nassour, Cooper did make
someone in Cooper’s crew made anonymous phone calls regarding a
suspicious package possibly containing drug paraphernalia, as a way of
testing the officer to see if he would steal the money. Cooper alleges
that Nassour did in fact steal $45 from the trap bag, thereby
committing a felony by tampering with evidence. The Liberty Hill Police
Chief confirmed that an investigation was underway following a
confrontation with Cooper.

Candi claimed officers found a minuscule amount of marijuana in
their home during the search. She said her husband would be bonded out
and released later this evening.

Update 1: Just called the Williamson County jail.
They confirmed Cooper was booked Tuesday night around 7:30 p.m. and is
still in custody.

Update 2: Cooper is being represented by Austin attorney James Gill,
who confirmed that the charges do stem from filing a false police
report. He could not confirm what class of offense that would fall
under, although Candi placed it as a Class A misdemeanor.

It is as yet unclear whether Williamson County police typically stage home invasions over misdemeanor offenses.

“At this point he’s being charged with some type of filing of a
false police report,” Gill said in a brief telephone interview. “I
don’t know exactly on that yet.”

Asked to confirm if the arrest is specifically linked to Cooper’s
sting operation in Liberty Hill, Gill said it was too early to confirm.
“We’re still doing some fact finding,” he said. “It’s certainly a
possibility.”

Update 3: Candi just told me that police have
obtained a second warrant, out of Travis County, for the marijuana that
was found in Cooper’s house. She initially said police had found “a few
roaches,” but later revised her estimate to “maybe an eighth or
something.”

“I don’t think he’ll get released tonight,” Candi said.

Update 4: A warrant for Candi’s arrest has been
issued for possession of marijuana. Her attorney has advised her to do
a “walk through” with police tomorrow.

The former Odessa narcotics agent and producer of the
promotional video series “Never Get Busted” was jailed Tuesday on
multiple charges — including possession of marijuana — while conducting
one of his notorious hoaxes on police in Florence, Texas, authorities
said.

Williamson County Sheriff’s Office Sgt. John Foster said
Cooper called in a suspicious package about 5 p.m. Tuesday on the
campus of the Florence Middle School. Foster said the package contained “a glass pipe that is normally used to smoke crack cocaine.”

“Apparently, he was doing this to test us,” Foster said. “When you
do something like this on a school grounds, even though it’s after
school hours … I’m sure the parents and faculty would probably have
been quite alarmed to find a crack pipe on their campus.”

I asked Candi about the portion highlighted in bold above and she
specifically denied it, claiming no ‘KopBusters’ operations were afoot
on Tuesday evening.

Barry is expected to be released sometime after midnight. Confirmation of his release will be posted here.

Update 5: Barry Cooper is free, and he’s been expecting the arrest all along.

During his legal briefing before the Liberty Hill sting went down,
he was specifically warned that police may try and charge him with a
violation of Texas penal code § 42.06, which is a Class A misdemeanor. The law begins:

A person commits an offense if he knowingly initiates,
communicates or circulates a report of a present, past, or future
bombing, fire, offense, or other emergency that he knows is false or
baseless…

The reason for the charge now appears to be separate from Cooper’s activities in Liberty Hill. As the Odessa American noted, police sought Cooper for an alleged sting operation in Florence, Texas, near a school grounds.

Cooper confessed to this reporter that a third attempted sting,
staged in Florence over two months ago, backfired. He placed a lunchbox
containing several assorted items, a fake drug ledger, $45 and
imitation drug paraphernalia on a bench and reported a suspicious
package, only to watch in horror as the police, operating after school
hours, treated it like a potential bomb threat.

“They overreacted!” he protested over the phone. “They’re making it
look like I had drug paraphernalia on school grounds. It was just a
glass tube, there was nothing illegal in the bag.” Cooper further
claimed that the operation went down late at night, after the Florence
PD had gone off duty, and not at 5 p.m. as reported.

Just moments after his release, Cooper claimed his arresting officer
was Sgt. Gary Haston, calling him “the fucking head of narcotics,” then
suggesting the presence of a vendetta. “He thought I had plants growing
in the house, or like several pounds of marijuana just sitting around,”
Cooper said. “I asked him, ‘Have you lost your fucking mind?’ They’re
real disappointed.”

Cooper was pulled over and arrested on Tuesday night as he was en
route to a speaking engagement before the University of Texas
Libertarian Longhorns. Police entered his home after he’d surrendered
the keys.

Update 6: In a voicemail left during the early
hours of the morning, Cooper explained that officers only found a few
joint roaches in the house; less than a gram total. That was apparently
enough for Travis County to issue two arrest warrants — one for Barry
and one for his wife. That’s on top of Williamson County’s arrest
warrant for the false police report. To get out, he posted a bond of
$2,000. Candi’s marijuana possession charge was a Class B misdemeanor
and she she too paid a $2,000 bond. Her warrant was issued by Judge Herb Evans, a JP in Travis County’s fifth precinct.

Every April, Austin is home to one of the largest reggae and marijuana festivals
in the nation, where people smoke marijuana openly in front of police
for days and arrests are rarely if ever made. The arrest warrants for
Barry and Candi over less than a gram strikes this reporter as highly
unusual for the most liberal county in Texas.

According to legal documents, the warrant to search Barry’s home was issued with the approval of Judge Judy Schier Hobbs, a Justice of the Peace in Williamson County’s fourth precinct.

While the county’s biographical information on Hobbs lauds her as
the Taylor Area Businesswoman Association’s “Woman of the Year” for
1989, and the State of Texas Justice of Peace and Constables
Association’s “Judge of the Year” for 1998, a quick query of the State Bar of Texas
reveals that she was not a lawyer before being appointed to the
judicial branch, where she has served since 1982. Hobbs is a life-long
Williamson County resident and her husband, the chief of police in the
City of Taylor for over 30 years, once served a stint as Williamson
County’s interim sheriff.

One of Cooper’s associates called judges like Hobbs a “judge in a
box,” always ready to assist police, even on something as rare as an
alleged misdemeanor that makes police want to breach someone’s home.

Update 7: Barry’s arresting officer is an
interesting fellow. I’ve come across a memo sent out by the Texas
Narcotics Officers Association that details a training course conducted
by Sgt. Gary Haston of the Williamson County Sheriff’s Department.
Below the course description, there’s a bio for Sgt. Haston. It reads:

Sergeant Haston has been in law enforcement for
seventeen (17) years with the past (13) thirteen years working in the
field of narcotics. (5 years assigned to the Capitol Area Narcotics
Task Force, 3 years to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Austin
Resident Office and 5 years at the Williamson County Sheriff’s Office
Narcotic Unit) Sergeant Haston has investigated hundreds of narcotic
crimes including undercover narcotic enforcement and criminal highway
interdiction. Sergeant Haston has been an instructor for the Office of
the Governor-Texas Narcotic Control Program, the Regional Counter-Drug
Training Academy in Meridian, Mississippi, the Capital Area Police
Training Academy in Austin, Texas and the Williamson County Sheriff’s
Office. Sergeant Haston is the 2008-2009 Texas Narcotic Officer’s
Association Vice President for the Texas Narcotic Officers Association
Central Region.

Apparently, an alleged misdemeanor and less than a gram of pot was enough to get this guy’s attention. Interesting …

Update 8: Even as a reporter following Cooper’s occasional escapades, I wasn’t aware of his campaign Web site,
harbored under the oddly auspicious name “Barry Bomb”. I knew he was
running as a libertarian candidate for attorney general of Texas, but
my writing tends not to focus on that due to both the flamboyancy of
his activism and his poor electoral showing against Rep. John Carter
(R-TX) in 2008, where Cooper garnered just three percent of the vote.

Still, I’ve got to wonder if his candidacy has anything to do with all this drama.

Update 9: Solicited for legal advice, Maury D.
Beaulier, an attorney in St. Louis Park, MN, said that home invasions
on the basis of an alleged misdemeanor are rare in his experience.

“A search warrant may be issued if there is probable cause to
support the belief that evidence of criminal activity may be found with
the warrant,” he wrote. “To be issued, a law enforcement officer must
submit an affidavit seeking the warrant.

“In my 19 years of experience with criminal defense matters, a
search warrant for a misdemeanor charge is certainly unusual. It
indicates to me that this is a targeted investigation. It may be
targeted because it is believed to be a part of a greater crime or
conspiracy, or, perhaps, because there are political motivations at
work.”

Update 10: Barry is mad as hell. He explained that
when he was pulled over on his way to the University of Texas, an
officer inquired about the contents of his garage. After Cooper refused
to talk, he claims he was placed under arrest for filing a false police
report.

Several months ago, Cooper purchased a grow tent and stored it in
his garage, expecting to grow tomatoes as legal way to teach the basics
of indoor marijuana cultivation on one of his films. I’ve personally
seen this tent. It has nothing in it, having been set aside and stored
in his garage in favor of other projects.

“They have been doing surveillance on my house and when I opened my
garage door, they saw that fuckin’ tent,” Cooper claimed. “When they
pulled me over, they asked, ‘what do you have in your garage?’ And I’m
like, holy shit, he thinks I’m growing pot!

“They really believed it, but they didn’t do their fuckin’ homework.
If they really had enough evidence to raid me for pot, they would have
got a search warrant for that. But they used this Liberty Hill thing to
get into my house. I used to do the same shit when I was a cop.”

If — or, perhaps, when — he loses his bid for Texas attorney
general, Cooper said he plans on running for Travis County Justice of
the Peace Precinct Five, against the very judge who issued arrest
warrants for he and his wife over the marijuana roaches.

“No question, this is a targeted political thing and I’m glad it
happened,” he said. “I can handle this. My family and I can handle
this. It’s no sweat off our balls. But I saw so many people in jail
whose families can’t handle this kinda stuff. As soon as they get out
of jail, they just pay their fines and keep their heads down, even if
they’ve been mistreated by the police. My case in particular is sad
because this proves that if you get into politics and you start
exposing corruption, you will be fucked with.”